Guest Post: Clayton Lockett’s Botched Execution Should Spell An End to the Death Penalty

On Tuesday night, Clayton Lockett died from a heart attack caused by a botched execution. This grave and painful error should give us all pause—and finally bring an end to the death penalty in America.

3 percent of all executions between 1890 and 2010 were botched: “from the slow strangulations and decapitations that occasionally occurred during hangings to the smoke and burning flesh of the electric chair to the agonizing death throes of those strapped to gurneys in lethal injection chambers.”

And yet even if executions take place precisely as intended, we have to ask ourselves as a country not only whether those convicted of crimes deserve to die, but whether the state deserves the power to kill.